Pre-Elon Musk Twitter may not have done the right journalistic thing by suppressing the sad, pathetic saga of Hunter Biden during the ‘20 ejection, but I’m glad they did it regardless. Because the Hunter Biden scandal is nothing, as I explained early last September:
Before yesterday’s 2:15 pm Lincoln Square screening of Avatar 2 they showed the trailer for James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 (Disney, 5.5.23). My spirit sank — another Marvel attitude goofball fan–service comedy in space. The patience of Chris Pratt’s Peter Quill once again tried by Dave Bautista’s Drax the Destroyer…really bad for the soul, man. Pit of depression.
My God, Avatar 2: The Way of Water rerally romps and stomps like nothing I’ve seen in a long while, and the astonishing CG realism (which I couldn’t settle into at first — it took me 10 minutes to find my way into it) is quite the thing, and there’s no beating that last 50- or 60-minute aquatic pitched-battle, breaching-whale, pulse-rifle-burst, arrow-piercing “woo-woo!” destructathon.
A family that fiercely fights together loves all the more…The Poseidon Adventure meets a return-to-Titanic sinkathon + The Abyss drowning trauma + weeping death scene + the wildest, craziest, most vigorously sustained battle lollapalooza ever…worth the price and then some…pays off like a motherfucker.
James Cameron is a drop-dead brilliant action director…let no one ever challenge that statement.
And I’m now determined to practice my Navi cat howl-Māori battle cry.
But so much of Avatar 2 is padded all to hell & is too fucking long, man…it could’ve easily, EASILY been 45 minutes shorter. The narrative pretty much stops in the middle section and becomes a bloated, ultra-costly real-estate video + a tricks-of-under-the-sea survival instructional + Club Med acqua-blue travelogue for glorious Pandora Shores.
The tech is marvelous and bracingly real & every last dollar seems to be on the screen. But there’s something oddly oppressive and even un-entertaining at times about being vigorously assaulted & smothered by so much CG dough…truckloads & truckloads of cash spent by the ultimate wizardly maestro of wildly expensive holy shit superfuck blockbusters. The film is a titanic grand-slam CG toy factory spendathon…whew!
I like the “family is a fortress” theme but my God, I was exhausted when it ended. I’m not altogether sure I want to see it a second time. Variety’s Owen Gleiberman was right when he called it thin. Pic seems to take as much as it gives.
Only in New York City can you negotiate the price of a large Good & Plenty. “$3.50,” the newsstand guy said. “They charged me $3.00 last week!…right here!”, I indignantly replied. Newsstand guy: “S’allright.” HE: “What?” Newsstand guy: “Three is good.”
All my life I’ve been nursing erotic fantasies about the late Helena Carter, who played “Dr. Blake with the torn blouse” in Invaders From Mars (‘53). The Ignite Bluray of this classic paranoid alien invasion film arrived yesterday, and it prompted a Google search about Carter, whose Invaders performance was not only her most famous but her last.
It was only after discovering Carter’s 1948 Life magazine cover photo that I realized why she didn’t catch on in a bigger way. Ten words: Beautiful eyes and mouth but her nose was too big -— i.e., on the bulbous side. If she’d gotten a nose job things might have turned out differently…seriously.
I’m not speaking as a 2022 woke (or more precisely woke-terrified) person but a time traveller from 1953, when emerging actresses were almost entirely judged and promoted according to their looks.
And I’m saying this, mind, as someone who’s gone under the knife myself so don’t tell me.
“And so here we find ourselves staring into the diarrhea splatter toilet bowl of modern entertainment for the last time in 2022.”
Nice location scouting on someone’s part. Unless they somehow erased the apes and tapirs from the original 2001 footage and replaced them with dolls and little girls. Either way, excellent work on Greta Gerwig‘s part.
“You’re a dilletante, a womanizer, unstable, theatrical, neurotic…”
I’m presuming this post won’t last long (attorneys will be swooping down) but given that millions of Avatar 2 viewers are watching this Oppenheimer teaser today, I don’t see what’s so ignoble about posting it here. The cat is out of the bag….let it run free.
Of all the Oppenheimer stars and costars, the only one I object to is Benny Safdie. Hollywood Elsewhere believes that performances by Benny Safdie need to be stopped, almost as much as EEAAO‘s path to Oscar glory needs to be stopped.
Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, Emily Blunt as Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer, Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves (aka Paul Newman‘sd role in Fat Man and Little Boy), Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock, Rami Malek as Mystery Man #1, Benny Safdie as Edward Teller, Josh Hartnett as Ernest Lawrence, Matthew Modine as Vannevar Bush. Not to mention Kenneth Branagh, Jason Clarke, Josh Peck Gary Oldman (as Harry S. Truman), Alex Wolff, Tony Goldwyn and Casey Affleck.
The bottom line, thank God, is that woke-minded or woke-angled content has proven time and again to be a commercial non-starter. Industry realists are facing the fact that the sacralizing of race, gender and sexuality isn’t a great business model, and that Joe and Jane Popcorn don’t give a toss either way.
The unfortunate aspect is that proponents of advancing #MeToo consciousness and the relentless insertion of DEI and Vito Russo quotas into everything remain convinced that the moral-social goal counter-balances (and perhaps even outweighs) the financial. They believe they’re serving God’s revolutionary agenda, and if you know anything about human nature you know that it’s very difficult to convince moral zealots that they’re on a fool’s errand.
Translation: Just as Hollywood’s John Wayne faction (anti-pinko patriotism) and the enforcement of hiring blacklists persisted throughout the 1950s, the current woke plague will probably continue into the mid 2020s. Even this rudimentary assessment will probably seem needlessly complex to Joe and Jane Popcorn. HE recognizes that J & J generally prefer to define and quantify Hollywood issues with short primitive sentences. I get it.
Attention all loyal MAGA morons…if you’re dumb enough to pay $99 for this, I’ll take your money with a smile.
Herewith is a 12.15.22 press release sent out on behalf of GLAAD, and it’s basically a complaint about how too many in the industry are failing to pass GLAAD’s Vito Russo Test on LGBTQ representation. Here it is verbatim:
GLAAD 10TH ANNUAL STUDIO RESPONSIBILITY INDEX: PERCENTAGE OF LGBTQ-INCLUSIVE FILMS DROPS, AS DOES RACIAL DIVERSITY AND SCREEN TIME
This report found a transgender character in major studio film for the first time in five years, though there was a decrease in percentage of LGBTQ characters of color, LGBTQ women, and zero LGBTQ characters living with disabilities or HIV
All seven studios receive “Insufficient,” “Poor,” or “Failing” grades as GLAAD includes new evaluation of public advocacy on LGBTQ issues, employee resources, and political giving from studios and parent companies.
Only nine films released in 2021 by major studios passed GLAAD’s Vito Russo Test on LGBTQ representation.
Los Angeles, CA – Thursday, December 15, 2022 — GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy organization, today released its tenth annual Studio Responsibility Index, a study that maps the quantity, quality, and diversity of LGBTQ characters in films released by the seven film studio distributors that had the highest theatrical grosses from films released in the 2021 calendar year (January 1, 2021 – December 31, 2021) as reported by the box office database Box Office Mojo. These studios are Lionsgate, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, United Artists Releasing, Universal Pictures, The Walt Disney Studios and Warner Bros.
For the full report, visit www.glaad.org/sri.
